Patrick Lyons

Patrick Lyons (6 January 1903 – 13 August 1967) was an Australian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the third Bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand (1944–1950), Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (1950–1957) and fourth Bishop of Sale, Victoria, Australia (1957–1967).

Patrick Francis Lyons was born in North Melbourne, as the second child of Patrick Joseph Lyons and his Irish-born wife Catherine Cecilia McMahon. He studied at St Mary's Primary School, West Melbourne and later at St. Joseph's CBC North Melbourne, run by the Christian Brothers, where he attained his Leaving Certificate. After matriculating from St Kevin's College, Melbourne he became a clerk in the Department of the Navy in 1918. He resigned four years later to pursue an ecclesiastical career. He attended St. Columba's College, St. Patrick's College, Melbourne and then entered the Pontifical Urbaniana University in 1923.

Lyons was ordained to the priesthood in Rome by Willem Cardinal van Rossum, CSSR, on his twenty-fourth birthday, 6 January 1927. After obtaining his doctorate in divinity in June of that same year, Lyons returned to Australia and then did pastoral work in Collingwood, Geelong, and Brunswick before joining the staff of St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1935. In 1938, he became administrator of the cathedral, archdiocesan chancellor, and private secretary to Archbishop Mannix. Lyons was named vicar general of Melbourne in 1939. During that same year, he established St. Patrick's Boys' Choir and choir school, incorporating members of the Vienna Boys' Choir displaced following the outbreak of World War II. In 1940, he was appointed cavaliere della Corona d'Italia in recognition of his services to the Italian community in Victoria.